Canada’s future belongs to immigration. Deal with it.

Last week in this space, columnist Michael Harris described the Conservative Party of Canada’s leadership race as a “slow-motion train wreck”.

He’s got a point: This is a contest in which the candidates seem bent on destroying one another through Trump-esque personal attacks, interspersed with dubious policy ideas based largely on ill-informed views and alt-right resentment of non-white, non-Christian immigrants. At this point, there’s little evidence that anyone in this race is developing a coherent policy direction that would allow Canada to remain on a track that addresses the broader realities of 21st century global development.

Like many of their ideological brethren, Conservative leadership candidates seem unable, or unwilling, to recognize that we are confronted by the same inexorable trends that have challenged us as human beings since we first started living in multiple family communities. The impact of these trends can be mitigated somewhat — but not stopped, not reversed.

Since neolithic times, the need to share and exchange what a family produced within the circle of a single community has been gradually extended to trade between villages, then city-states, and ultimately nation states. And today, despite the reluctance of the Nigel Farages and Donald Trumps of this world, trade is now extending beyond states to commerce between regional blocs.

We are moving towards an even more globalized world where new, rapid modes of transport and communication will enable even the poorest countries and the most remote of populations to see and aspire to what the wealthiest have now. A glimpse of a better life is only a TV or computer screen away; getting there is often only a question of paying a trafficker. While migration flows can be slowed, they can’t be stopped — not so long as obscene gaps in wealth and well-being persist.

At the same time, humans are also subject to what social scientists refer to as the ‘demographic transition’, with healthier, more educated and formally employed women having fewer children. The results include wealthier nations, aging populations, fewer young people entering the labour force and a narrowing tax base constraining governments’ ability to pay for those dependent on public pensions and welfare.

Our politicians can pursue their misplaced nostalgia for greater cultural purity and the nativist illusion of greater policy sovereignty — at the expense of our economic and social well-being.

Though conservative populists in western societies would like to see more of today’s women staying home and having babies, this will not happen with more girls being educated. Nor should it, especially given the unsustainable pressures the globe’s growing population is putting on our natural environment.

The only viable response to this demographic transition is to bring in a constant flow of young immigrants — most of whom will have to be from non-white, non-Christian countries since, in general, it is they who have the growing proportion of young people, while we in the West are experiencing a relative decline in what demographers call the youth cohort.

And yet, following the Brexit vote, surveys have shown conclusively that the vast majority of those who voted to leave the EU were largely driven by their opposition to immigration from Third World countries — those “others” who, according to them and their political patrons, have supposedly stolen their jobs and disproportionately benefited from our overly generous social welfare systems.

So where do these unstoppable forces of globalization and demography leave the Kellie Leitchs, the Kevin O’Learys and the Maxime Berniers of this world? As I see it, they basically have two strategic options available to them.

One leads to a world of growing intolerance, animosity and social conflict. The other leads to a better, more stable world in which diversity is accepted as a normal, welcome part of the human condition.

As the Brexiters have done, our politicians can pursue their misplaced nostalgia for greater cultural purity (which Britain never had, as the wars between its constituent nations have demonstrated over the centuries) and the nativist illusion of greater policy sovereignty — at the expense of our economic and social well-being. They can, in other words, choose a narrowing tax base, an aging population and higher dependency ratios.

On the other hand, they could accept that the health of their societies very much depends on bringing younger people into their economies, thereby reducing the proportion of the elderly and those dependent on pensions and public welfare, while broadening the tax base through a growing and more productive labour force.

But this would require them to recognize the inexorable nature of globalization and demography while valuing diversity and acknowledging that their cultures have never been static. It would require them to learn that their cultures evolved largely through the enrichment of immigration, through the impact of diverse peoples and ideas.

Perhaps the one principle that must remain a constant, however, is the clear separation of church from state. Without it, politicians can only lay the foundations for discrimination and social disharmony.

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